Cllr Rabina Khan, Lutfur Rahman’s cabinet member for housing, was the latest to draw the short straw for media appearances yesterday.
Lutfur himself only agrees to Panorama interviews these days.
His deputy, Oli Rahman, is considered, er, a little too bold for these occasions, so it was left to Rabina, who has previously worked for the BBC, to defend the council after the PwC report yesterday.
She has ambitions to become the Tower Hamlets First MP for Bethnal Green and Bow.
She gave the interview to BBC London News last night while standing in the foyer of the town hall in Mulberry Place. One person who witnessed it said she was being coached on what to say (during the interview itself) by the council’s head of communications, Takki Sulaiman.
I’m told he was waving at her like a disoriented semaphore operator. “No evidence of fraud,” was what he apparently mouthed at her repeatedly.
I think he may have put her off. Something did. It was a bit of a car crash. She should have been more natural.
The interview is about seven minutes in here.
(The clip is only available until 6.30pm tonight, so someone may want to put it on YouTube and send me link to save it for posterity.)
Trial by Jeory 
I can capture and post it later on if no one else does.
Sent from my iPhone
>
Thanks
Someone else will have to do it, My video capture software seems to be out of date. That was a car crash of an interview.
Just to clarify, I have captured the clip of her interview. Ill post it on Youtube sometime soon.
Thanks Dan
not sure what is car crash about this, you can hardly blame her for the sound delay. Peter Golds would be a better example of car crash interviews
Sound delays are off-putting but it’s better to avoid brain delay to be honest. Engage with the interviewer, be thoughtful, surprise the audience.
Acting like a parrot and reeling off scripted lists just makes you sound like a low grade, non-trustworthy and ordinary politician.
no doubt she has work to do. but we can’t all have the oxbridge polish like rushanara does. speaking of which, did you see her pleading to prickles to bring in the commissioners and election monitoring before next May. she sounded worried / or desperate. or both.
It doesn’t take ‘oxbridge’ polish to answer a straight question.
It does take a certain lack of integrity and inability to see what you have done wrong to act like the imbecile she appeared to be.
If anyone votes for her over Rushanara then they will clearly be voting for one reason only, and that doesn’t need to be spelled out, does it POPLAR?
Tim.
I think we all know which side POPLAR’s bread is buttered.
Nobody’s complaining about a sound delay.
Maybe you’re not familiar with live television interviews? That happens with all of them and does not reflect badly on the person being interviewed.
What reflects badly – and effectively buries any thoughts of her future in politics outside Tower Hamlets – is the inability to answer a straight question and a tendency to parrot a script given to her by others.
The only time she sounded normal was right at the end when she started to talk about the people in her surgery. Unfortunately she was completely off topic and her comments came to a close very fast – which is what happens when you go off topic.
What sort of coward puts a woman who is clearly untrained in media interviews in front of camera to do a live interview and answer questions which he should be answering himself.
Hi Ted
I agree, I only saw the snippet at 10.30pm
I have really appreciated your blogs on this sorry state of affairs.
One thing it has encouraged me to do is to root out some of my papers from when I was scrutinising the Labour Council on their grant making ten years ago.
They were really no better than the current Mayoral administration, favouring particular organisations and individuals in Tammany Hall style-politics. Some of the self-righteous statements from the TH Labour Party in the wake of the pwc report are hard to stomach, even though the Peck/Saunders brigade were not around at the time.
People have short memories - the Labour corruption led to jail sentences for an officer and former Councillor . . . whilst I cannot take credit for its exposure, our efforts in opposition through the then new Cabinet scrutiny functions played their part and made the then CEO, Christine Gilbert, take action.
Best wishes
John
I had to laugh at Khan’s ineptitude. I would assume she was versed all afternoon on what lies to promulgate and boy they sure dumbed it down for her…..’They found no fraud or criminality.’ I don’t know where they locate this fact seeing Pickles is sending the files to the police and that PWC abstained from investigating sections the police are already investigating. However it was found that Rahman, Khan, Choudary and the other bigots in this obnoxious, odious Tower Hamlets First overseen and promoted racism, bigotry, bias, cronyism, nepotism, extremism and funded hatred. There are many murderers out there who can claim they are not rapists, does that stop them being odious repugnant criminals. The sooner this government finds the guts to take on these bigots head first the better it will be for all of us and maybe help Tower Hamlets lose its stench of corruption and home of the terrorist. As for the police, Jesus they are all entwined with this poisonous party of bigots, all scared to speak out and hiding from that big racism accusation by Rahman and his cabal of racists. This is Asian politics in all its glory. As for Khan’s moronic claim about no fraud no criminality, remember the thievery of over £125,000 of taxpayer’s money by the brass necked Baroness Pola Uddin by lying through her teeth. When that thief was caught bang to rights, we discovered no criminality there either and that thief just paid back what she stole and carried on milking the taxpayer while producing no benefit whatsoever. How on earth can a thief be making laws for the rest of us to adhere to. Rahman and his crooked cronies have overseen the theft of millions, yet these racist bigots demand we should let them continue unabated. Tower Hamlets is a cesspit of crooks and bigots
Eloquently written.
You’re obvious a big fan of Rabina Khan and the rest of the Mayor’s gang 🙂
CC.
I watched Rabina Khan’s interview on BBC 1’s London regional news.
She seemed confused, unsure of the facts and was unimpressive. Did she represent the best or the worse of the Mayor’s unquestioning acolytes ?
I would never vote for her.
Curious Cat.
The problem is, let’s face it, as the poster above says Tower Hamlets is a cesspit of crooks and bigots. She could have gone on there and forgotten her own name, there are enough clowns in this borough whose votes are bought, and who believe all the tripe that everyone who doesn’t worship Lutfur is a racist, that she could still quite possibly win election for Bethnal Green & Bow. That people who would vote for such a person are allowed to vote and not sectioned is perhaps the real scandal in this borough.
You omitted those who are literature and the few that use thumb prints as their signature – strange such people should be given postal votes …………..
CC.
Is she being coached via an earpiece hidden under her scarf? What is that strange electronic sound you can hear in the background?
No. That’s the TV earpierce so she can hear what the BBC presenter is asking her. There was a delay on the line. Q normal.
Her interview was a shambles, she was a Paxman candidate just repeating the same sentence time after time. She proved what an inadequate human being she is, she’ll be adorned in a big wooden nose this morning. I live in hope that the Met acquire some honest coppers willing to take out this cancer from our society but Blair crucified the truth by installing looney left policing that is terrified of saying anyone with a slightly darker colour of skin than Casper the ghost can be a criminal. Tower Hamlets Labour group created this scenario by pandering to racists and bigots for a generation. All the labour luvvies like Ruth Kelly and Oona King are guilty of allowing racists and homophobic bigots to hijack Tower Hamlets labour party. We had the pandering brigade looking for poodle existence, lickspittles who aided and abetted the racist thieves, too scared to question their own mentality. I did express to many councillors over the years that these people would bin them as soon as prudently possible because they were expendable to the biased, sectarian agenda of these bigots. Tower Hamlets First, the odious Galloway and his respect rabble proved where the endemic and systematic racism, bigotry, homophobia was most prevalent and it sure as hell was not from the fascists of the BNP or NF or other right wing faction, not one white candidate ever elected. The undisputed champion of Tower Hamlets bigotry is at the core of the council. Rahman, Choudary, Khan and the rest of THF and a hell of a lot of labour councillors are responsible for the pervasive hatred and corruption that lingers across the streets. Labour must carry the can for foisting racism on the people in order to pander to and promote left wing thieves, racists and bigots with stone age, sexist, homophobic, sectarian ideals. And that is just their good points
Can anybody now see her standing up in Parliament to deliver a speech or ask questions of a minister on behalf of the residents of Tower Hamlets? Thought not.
More failure from Tower Hamlets ‘Last’ to engage with any sense of reality! The mind boggles at what it must be like to see things from their perspective…I assume they must all be looking through a kaleidoscope all the time…..grippy stuff.
The expression….hung out to dry springs to mind!
Trippy stuff!
The only candidate from Lutfur’s camp that stands a chance against Rushnara is Ohid.
Has Lutfut signed the 3pm agreement?
The thing is the PWC Report does NOT say they found no evidence of fraud or criminality i.e. she can parrot away the agreed line all she likes – it doesn’t make it true!!
Try doing what I did. Download the report as a pdf and then search for the words ‘fraud’ and ‘criminal’ – and then look at what it actually does say.
What it does say is that
* PAGE 3: “We note in addition that, as at the date of this report, there are a number of criminal investigations on- going into allegations of fraud (reported by the Authority).”
* PAGE 94/95: “In addition to the above funding streams, we are aware of further awards made by the Rapid Response Team who sit as part of YCS. In January 2014 an independent investigation was commissioned by the Authority into whistle blower allegations about funding awards made to a third sector organisation. This investigation resulted in the Authority referring the matter to the Metropolitan Police Service for criminal investigation. During the Inspection we became aware of the Authority’s concerns about payments to eight other third sector organisations. In consultation with the police, we agreed to avoid any enquiries that might cut across the criminal investigation, and so our access to documents and witnesses relevant to these issues has been limited.”
As I expected this investigation stayed well clear of all currently recognised activity which is being investigated by the police with respect to FRAUD AND CRIMINAL BEHAVIOUR.
So maybe Lutfur could try again and tell us which page of the report states that the inspection team found no evidence of fraud and criminality?
Correct ycmiu, I am actually reading the entire report and as stated I don’t know where they get the fairy tale from because their claim is like everything about this corrupt entity, it is Fraudulent, fabricated and like the financial accounts belonging to these thieves and racists, there is no paper trail to lead to this outrageous claim to honesty. Rahman and his crooks are to honesty what Fred West was to Babysitter of the year.
I assume Poplar that you are ‘Stephen’, the lickspittle who is paid by Rahman to portray the white section of the population as somehow enthralled at watching racism, sexism, homophobia, and sectarianism thrive in the borough at the taxpayer’s expense. Every country had quislings in the war and I don’t see any difference in Tower Hamlets today.
John,
Aren’t you going to vote for Rahman in the Mayor of the Year contest ?
CC.
Now then – what’s the views on our Dear Leaders Message to the people on BBC London News?
Mr Mayor is exonerated.
LBTH is a success story.
Grants were awarded by the Officers.
No one got a grant unless they applied.
The critics have misunderstood everything.
Mr Mayor is not resigning 😦
Nothing to do with me guv.
I’ve been saying for months that we need to tighten our processes
Them politicians in parliament, saying all those things and I can’t silence them my usual way – threats of legal action
This is so unfair
Ted don’t you think Rabina’s plan to become Lutfurs MP candidate next May is a little too optimistic? I think either Cllr Ohid (A long term experienced politician)or Ajmol Masroor (Another strong potential option) deserve the opportunity rather then her. Migrant
It looks like one of Lutfurs Stormtroopers is marking everything down. Not long till the Courts ban him from Office.